The Pacific War: From Pearl Harbor to Okinawa

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

PEARL HARBOR

Carl Smith

CORAL SEA

Mark Stille

MIDWAY

Mark Stille

GUADALCANAL

Joseph Mueller

TARAWA

Derrick Wright

MARSHALL ISLANDS

Gordon L. Rottman

PELELIU

Jim Moran and Gordon L. Rottman

LEYTE GULF

Bernard Ireland

IWO JIMA

Derrick Wright

OKINAWA

Gordon L. Rottman

FOREWORD

On a hot, muggy summer day I strolled through the Punchbowl Cemetery on Oahu looking for a little shade to help preserve the creases melting out of my uniform. An old-timer leaning on a cane spotted me and patted a spot next to him on a marble bench. He was in his seventh or eighth decade of hard living and wearing an overseas cap that attested to his service as a Marine in the Pacific during World War II. Hell of a thing, he said, sweeping an arthritic hand across the ranks of sparkling headstones. It was a dollar job on a dime budget all the way from Pearl Harbor to Okinawa. Everybody was worrying about Hitler and the Nazis.

His complaint was overstated but entirely understandable. In 1940 when American leadership was contemplating involvement in a world war for the second time in the 20th century, there was a tacit agreement that the initial effort would be against Axis powers in Europe. As most Americans at the time claimed some ancestry or familial descent from European nations, it was perhaps a natural reaction among war planners. And then the infamous Japanese attack on American forces and facilities in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, made a two-front war a reality. Pearl Harbor threw the American planners into a frenzy of shifting priorities. There were angry voices in Congress and across the country calling for an immediate counterstrike against the Japanese Empire, but the leadership fell back on the default setting when the US declared war on Germany three days later.

There were practical as well as philosophical reasons for this: America’s striking power for what would clearly be a naval campaign against the Japanese in the Pacific had been badly damaged at Pearl Harbor. It would take time, money, and manpower to get those forces ready to begin a long and bloody struggle across vast expanses of ocean to stem the Japanese tide of victories in the Pacific and save Allied nations such as Australia and New Zealand from conquest. In the meantime, embattled American commanders such as General Douglas MacArthur in the Philippines and Admiral Chester Nimitz in Hawaii were forced to focus on survival as opposed to counterattack.

The tide began to turn in 1942 with the battle of the Coral Sea, the first naval engagement between opposing aircraft carrier task forces operating over the horizon from each other, and with the first American ground offensive at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. Both battles were won on very tight margins and quickly demonstrated to Allied planners that war in the Pacific would be a brutal, island-hopping affair focused on wrenching vital airfields from Japanese control. To support and supply the soldiers, sailors, and Marines fighting and dying on battlefields with often unpronounceable names, America and her Allies had to rely on a logistical tail that stretched across thousands of miles of ocean patrolled and controlled early in the war by marauding Japanese air and naval armadas.

Sailors aboard surface combatants and submarines and operating off aircraft carriers through the South and Central Pacific learned hard and costly lessons when they came up against a Japanese Navy schooled and experienced in night-time engagements. Infantry forces slugging it out with fanatical defenders on Pacific flyspecks like Tarawa, Saipan, and Peleliu mostly had to make do with whatever was at hand. Resupply was a long way off and requisitions often took months to fill. It was brutal in the extreme; and different in many respects from combat in the European Theater of Operations. Marines and soldiers in Pacific combat encountered an enemy that fought with an obsessive, no-quarter psychology that differed shockingly from Western approaches to warfare.

They got it done minus much of the fanfare and publicity that attended Allied advances and victories in other theaters of World War II. Among fighting men in the Pacific a sort of perverse pride often developed as they read newspaper clippings or heard radio broadcasts celebrating Allied campaigns in Europe following D-Day in 1944. Marines in the Pacific claimed to be Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children (USMC) and American Army survivors of the Japanese steamroller in the Philippines called themselves the Battling Bastards of Bataan, no mama, no papa, no Uncle Sam. Of course, none of them did what they did in the Pacific for glory or acclaim. That was the farthest thing from their minds as they battled through Leyte Gulf, over the bloody black sands of Iwo Jima and into the agonizing meat-grinder of combat on Okinawa, and right up to the end of the war.

They just wanted to get the job done, to survive, to go home and pick up where they left off when war interrupted their lives. Those of us who live free today have had 70 years to contemplate their service and sacrifice and we’ve not done enough to let the aging survivors know how vital it was to our way of life. Books like this one are dedicated to help correct that. It’s the least we can do.

Captain Dale Dye USMC (Ret)

May 2011

INTRODUCTION

On the evening of December 8, 1941, I sat huddled with my parents in front of our radio, listening to the first reports coming in of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. I was five at the time, but the impact of the news was so great that I can still recall it clearly. Although we were in Melbourne, Australia, and a long way from the scene of the American disaster, there were only meagre British, Dutch, and Australian forces between ourselves and the oncoming Imperial Japanese forces. Two days later we were shaken by news of the sinking off the coast of Malaya of the only British capital ships in regional waters, the Prince of Wales and the Repulse. We began building air raid shelters in our back-gardens and thinking about evacuation to the countryside. My father patrolled the streets at night as an Air Raid Precautions warden, enforcing the blackout of house and external lighting to deny any Japanese bombers an aiming mark.

How had this disaster for the United States and its friends and Allies happened in so short a time? Could the advance of the Japanese armed forces be halted? What would it take to hurl them back onto their home soil and force them to surrender? This very timely volume offers in-depth answers to the second and third of these questions, but let me address some thoughts by way of reply to the first, with gratitude to my paternal grandfather who fought against the Boxer Rebellion in China, 1900–01, and in World War I, on each occasion with Japanese as allies. He had 40 years of naval experience between 1888 and 1928, and was a keen observer of strategic matters in the Pacific. In turn, he helped to develop my interest in these issues while I was in my teens.

Japan discovered the potential of modern seapower in the 1880s, and through British naval tutelage and the purchase of British warships, it soon had a powerful fleet led by competent officers. The Japanese sank the Chinese Navy in two major battles of 1894 (the Yalu River) and 1895 (Wei Haiwei), and proved themselves as the top naval power of north-east Asia. Japan had been fostering the expertise of the remarkable man who was to be known as the Nelson of the East, Admiral Heihachiro Togo, by sending him to Britain for seven years of training and experience. In 1902 the British went so far as to conclude a formal alliance with Japan – which was particularly helpful for Britain, Australia, and New Zealand in resisting German pressures during World War I. The combination of even more powerful British-made warships and Togo’s leadership enabled the Japanese to defeat the strong fleet that Russia sent to the Far East at the battle of Tsushima in 1905. As a result, Japan was fully established as a major Pacific naval power.

It took remarkably little time for the Japanese to develop naval airpower. In September 1914 they made the first successful attack by naval aircraft in the history of warfare when they struck the Germans in the battle of Tsingtao, China. Having removed the German Navy from western Pacific waters, the only potential rival that the bold, thrusting Japanese naval leadership then faced was the United States Navy. The Americans had been keeping a close eye on the Japanese since their victory over the Russians in 1905, and in 1906 the US moved ahead to develop a war plan to defeat any future Japanese naval threat to US interests in the Pacific. American authorities formally adopted the final version of this plan, Plan Orange, in 1924, although it had its origins in the thinking of Rear Admiral Raymond P. Rodgers from as early as 1911. It assumed that, in the event of hostilities, the initial Japanese pressure would be applied to the Philippines and the small Pacific island bases of the US. The American response, after a period of mobilization and force concentration, would be to re-take their own island bases, and remove the Japanese from theirs, while US naval forces were en route to relieve the Philippines. The US fleet would then confront the Imperial Japanese Navy in a fight to the finish. Japan was then to be brought to her knees by a naval blockade.

The Japanese, for their part, correctly assessed the nature of the US war plan and made their own, which would allow a US fleet to reach the Philippines, while suffering losses from Japanese naval air and submarine attacks along the way. This weakened fleet would then be annihilated by the Japanese in a great naval battle, similar to the one that the US Plan Orange envisaged.

The development of the striking power of the respective fleets in the 1920s and 30s was thus crucial to the course of the war in the Pacific. Another factor strengthening the Japanese hand was its acquisition of mandates from the League of Nations to govern the former German islands of the northern and central Pacific: the Carolines, the Marianas, and the Marshalls. These mandates placed the islands virtually under Japanese law but, like all mandate holders, they were not permitted to fortify them. Nonetheless, that is what the Japanese did, creating a strategic barrier through which US forces intending to relieve the Philippines in a future war would have to fight their way.

The Japanese became the object of US diplomatic pressure soon after World War I. The Americans wanted to end the Anglo-Japanese alliance and to constrain the further growth of Japanese naval power. Both objectives were secured at the Washington Naval Conference of 1921–22. The Japanese were both humiliated and angry at this outcome, and this in turn fed the tensions that caused the war in the Pacific. Severe limitations on Japanese migration to the US, pressure to withdraw from former German territory in China, and trade restrictions aggravated the Japanese further during the 1920s and 30s. All of this played into the hands of military and political leaders who wanted to exploit Japan’s naval strength in the Pacific to create a new international order there and in China.

In the meantime both the US and Japan had gone ahead with the planning and development of through-deck aircraft carriers, so that by the 1930s both navies had formidable airpower capabilities. Despite their differences and enmity, the Japanese and the Americans made sporadic efforts to settle their differences peacefully. These initiatives proved unsuccessful and the Japanese finally decided in 1941 to use force. In turn, the British, having alienated the Japanese by commencing construction of a great naval base at Singapore, had scaled down their presence and were no longer a great naval power in the Pacific. By 1941 Britain had little power to spare as it was heavily engaged in action in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. When the Japanese decided to strike they had only the United States to focus on, enabling the execution of the bold and complex plan for striking the US Navy in its base at Pearl Harbor.

This book examines the complex series of events leading up to the attack of December 7, 1941, the attack itself, and the bloody consequences which were to follow. I invite the reader to study and evaluate the expert views set forth in the following chapters, and to think about the question of whether so great a catastrophe could befall a major power in the Pacific in the 21st century.

Professor Robert O’Neill

June 2011

ORIGINS OF THE CAMPAIGN

Below, thick fluffy clouds blanketed the blue sky. Shoving the stick forward, Lieutenant Mitsuo Matsuzaki dropped his Nakajima B5N2 Type 97 Kate into more blue sky, the horizon broken by the low land mass he was approaching. His observer, Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, the mission commander, was watchful. Hawaii looked green and oddly peaceful. He scanned the horizon. It looked too good to be true; other than his fliers, no aircraft were visible.

It was 0730hrs Hawaii time; the date, December 7, 1941. Fuchida’s destination was the home of the US Pacific Fleet – Pearl Harbor. The fleet and three aircraft carriers berthed there were the key targets. A statement notifying the US that war had been declared had been scheduled for delivery to Washington an hour earlier. This air strike would be the first act of war between Imperial Japan and the United States.

OPPOSING COMMANDERS

THE US COMMANDERS

Admiral Husband (Hubby) E. Kimmel was the naval commander at Pearl Harbor. In February 1941 he was promoted to Commander-in-Chief Pacific (CINCPAC), becoming the Navy’s senior admiral. As CINCPAC, Kimmel moved to Pearl Harbor, home of the Pacific Fleet. He was unhappy with the defense arrangements in Hawaii and Pearl Harbor. At the time responsibility for them was split: the Army was responsible for land and air defense and the Navy for the Navy Yard itself. The Navy was responsible for reconnaissance but the Army controlled the radar stations and both air and shore defenses in case of invasion. In addition, each service had to compete for allocation of supplies and material. Kimmel let his strong feelings about this tangled web of responsibilities be known. Still, he was a career officer, and having stated his objections, he followed orders.

Lieutenant-General Walter C. Short was the Army commander at Pearl Harbor. His men were well drilled but, under his command, unit commanders carefully watched the use of expendable ammunition and materiel. Short followed his orders to the letter, but failed to read between the lines and was surprised when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Ten days after the attack, he was recalled to Washington and replaced by General Delos Emmons.

Admiral Harold (Betty) R. Stark became Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) in 1939 and overcame strong isolationist sentiment to start construction of modern naval vessels and bases. He beefed up the Pacific Fleet at Pearl, and, aided by information from the MAGIC code, knew that Japanese–American relations were dramatically declining and approaching a state of war. He gave commanders warnings, but because of the prevailing belief that Pearl Harbor was so strong, he felt the Japanese would attack elsewhere. When Ambassador Nomura’s message declaring war was translated by MAGIC on December 7, 1941, he started to send a message to Pearl Harbor, but General George C. Marshall assured him that Army communications could get it there just as fast. In fact, it arrived after the air raid had begun. Stark was relieved as CNO on March 7, 1942, although Marshall retained his position.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed General George C. Marshall as Chief of Staff on September 1, 1939, and gave him his fourth star. Despite his position, unlike many others, no stigma for the debacle was attached to him.

Marshall fully supported the defeat Germany first concept, and many would later blame the length of the Pacific War on his cautious approach to planning and implementation of war plans.

THE JAPANESE COMMANDERS

As a mere captain, Isoroku Yamamoto had successfully negotiated an increase in Japan’s naval allowance at the London Naval Conference in 1923. He returned to Japan a diplomatic hero and became Vice-Minister of the Navy. Yamamoto favored air power, and he relegated the steel navy to a secondary position, opposing the building of the battleships Yamato and Musashi as antiquated technology, stating: These … will be as useful … as a samurai sword. He championed new aircraft carriers and acknowledged that he had no confidence whatsoever in Japan’s ability to win a protracted naval war.

In mid-August 1939, he was promoted to full admiral and became Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleet. He became a Rommel-like figure to the men of his command, inspiring them to greater efforts by his confidence, and improved the combat readiness and seaworthiness of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) by making it practice in good and bad weather, day and night. Yamamoto did not wish to go to war with the US, but once the government had made this decision, he devoted himself to the task of giving Japan the decisive edge. It was he who decided that Pearl Harbor would be won with air power, not battleships, and the final attack plan was his.

Commander Mitsuo Fuchida entered the Naval Academy and befriended Commander Minoru Genda when they discovered a shared love for flying. Their friendship and mutual respect was to last for years, and in many ways it helped shape the concept of air war and the attack on Pearl Harbor. While in China, Fuchida learned the art of torpedo bombing, and he was recognized throughout the IJN as a torpedo ace.

Rear-Admiral Takijiro Onishi had Commander Minoru Genda write a feasibility study for a proposed Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Commander Genda wrote the study and constructed a strategy with ten main points, most of which were incorporated into the final plan. He developed the First Air Group’s torpedo program, and proposed a second attack on Pearl Harbor several days after the first, wanting to annihilate the US fleet. He remained aboard the carrier Akagi as Vice-Admiral Chuichi Nagumo’s air advisor, and was on deck to welcome Fuchida’s flight back.

Vice-Admiral Chuichi Nagumo was a career naval officer and an expert in torpedo warfare. He was appointed commander of the Kido Butai, the 1st Air Fleet, despite his lack of familiarity with and experience in naval aviation. He commanded the 1st Air Fleet at Pearl Harbor from the deck of his flagship, Akagi.

Admiral Kichisaburo Nomura was the Japanese ambassador to Washington at the time of Pearl Harbor, and was cast unwittingly in the role of villain. Both Emperor Hirohito and Yamamoto insisted that at least 30 minutes notice be given to the US prior to the outbreak of hostilities at Pearl Harbor. A message was sent to Nomura: he was to give it to Secretary of State Cordell Hull at 1300hrs Washington time. The message was sent in 14 parts and decoded as it arrived. Because of the security on this message, Nomura did not have a competent typist with sufficient clearance. The person selected was slow and Nomura postponed his appointment until 1400hrs. Nomura saw Hull at 1420hrs and delivered the message. Hull was infuriated and terse during the meeting. Nomura soon discovered the reason for Hull’s reception: Pearl Harbor had already been attacked by Japan. Hull declared to the press immediately afterward that he had never seen a message so full of falsehoods and distortions … on a scale so huge that I never imagined … any government … was capable of uttering them.

THE JAPANESE PLAN

The Japanese had watched the expansion of Pearl Harbor with considerable interest and concern. It was clearly the strongest US Navy base and the first way-station from the mainland to the Far East. Due to their experiences during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05) and the victories at Port Arthur and Tsushima, many in the Japanese High Command believed in a Great All-Out War with the US Navy. Japanese warships had been thoughtfully designed to better their American counterparts with an extra gun, extra speed, more torpedo tubes, or by any other means.

Within the IJN, there was a rift between the battleship admirals and the younger air power admirals: the former held true to the Great All-Out War theory, while the latter realized that British success at Taranto in 1940 when British aircraft sunk the pride of the Italian fleet presaged the future of naval warfare. As a result, Yamamoto trained young officers for air war.

In early 1941, Yamamoto began preparation for the Southern Operation, the Japanese plan to conquer the resource-rich areas of Asia. One of the operation’s components, the Hawaii Operation, comprised the thrust on Pearl Harbor. Plans were clear: if negotiations had not succeeded by November 23, 1941, a military solution would commence.

The IJN had clear details on Pearl Harbor. As the harbor was in plain view of the city, and visitors could take aerial sight-seeing trips over the naval basin and near most military posts, espionage was relatively simple. Within a few months the IJN had a complete record of all vessels stationed at Pearl, their schedules, which ships were under repair, which had left for sea duty, and the disposition of aircraft.

The US Navy and Army commands did take some preventative measures. Lieutenant-General Short, concerned about sabotage, ordered all Army aircraft to be bunched together so they could be better guarded: however, this also made them sitting ducks for an air assault. He ordered munitions secured, coastal artillery put on alert, and radar stations shut down at 0700hrs. Admiral Kimmel started rotating carriers in and out of the harbor and set up ship and naval aircraft patrols. Vessels were alert for submarine threats to shipping. Nonetheless, the aircraft carrier Lexington was ordered to take aircraft, which Kimmel felt were sorely needed at Pearl, to Midway.

Despite precautions, no one really dreamed of an air attack. Warships, yes; sabotage and possibly an invasion force, yes; but air attack? No one gave it much credence.

Throughout the months leading up to the attack, US government cryptographers carefully monitored Japanese transmissions. Washington, while still neutral, agreed with London that the Allies would concentrate on defeating Germany first. As a result, London was given three of the ultra-secret MAGIC decoders, but Pearl Harbor did not receive any. Moreover, because of the defeat Germany first mentality, men and materiel which could have bolstered the Pacific operations were diverted to the Atlantic.

THE ATTACK ON PEARL HARBOR

OPENING MOVES

Although he did not know the significance of the date, Nomura was told to complete negotiations by November 22, although this deadline was later extended by seven days. Nomura could not know that the deadline coincided with the sailing of the Southern Operation task force.

Japanese naval vessels slipped out of anchorage in twos and threes to rendezvous at Hitokappu Bay in the Kurile Islands on November 22, 1941. They would sail on November 26, following a northerly route to avoid accidental sightings by US vessels and aircraft, which operated on a more southerly route. Once under way, the fleet would maintain radio silence, and dummy transmissions from near the Japanese mainland would maintain the illusion for Allied listening posts that the task force was still in Japanese waters.

THE HAWAII OPERATION

The Japanese military plan had three phases. Phase I was to surprise Pearl Harbor, neutralize the American fleet, and extend the perimeter to include Wake Island, the Gilberts, the northern Solomons, most of New Guinea, Java, Sumatra, Malaya, Burma (east to the Indian border), Thailand, the Philippines, and Borneo. Phase II was to strengthen the military presence on the new perimeter. Phase III was defensive: to protect the perimeter and destroy any incursions from the outside. Simultaneous Army and Navy attacks were to batter Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, and Malaya. The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) would land on the latter two and thrust toward Java. Wake Island, Thailand, Guam, and Hong Kong would also be occupied by the Army. Two destroyers, Ushio and Sazanami, would shell Midway, and carriers returning from Pearl Harbor would complete the reduction of any defenders on Wake. Although there was no overall commander, Army and Navy attacks would be simultaneous: one swift thrust and the ripe fruits of the Pacific would fall into Japanese hands.

The planned attack on Pearl Harbor called for a concentrated assault using dive-bombers, high-altitude bombing, and torpedo attacks. Bombers began practice runs, both high-altitude and dive-bombing. The pilots’ scores constantly improved and their hit ratios soared. Torpedo bombers also began practicing, but their scores were less impressive, and although Genda did everything within his power, there was a barrier his men could not break, no matter how much they practiced. The harbor was simply too shallow for the conventional torpedoes then in use, and the Japanese Type 91 Model 1 torpedoes would penetrate too deeply into the water and would stick in the mud of the shallow harbor.

Despite the success of the British torpedo attack at Taranto, the US did not put out torpedo nets in Pearl Harbor: they were extremely time-consuming to erect, and it was generally accepted that the harbor was too shallow for conventional torpedoes to function. This false sense of security was heightened by Pearl’s seemingly impregnable defenses, which rendered sea bombardment an unlikely eventuality.

Based on the action at Taranto, Japan had correctly identified bombing and torpedo runs as the most effective way to destroy the ships of the US fleet. The major problem remained, however, the shallowness of the harbor.

Fuchida, Genda, and Lieutenant-Commander Shigeharu Murata insisted that torpedo attacks in waters up to 33ft deep must improve. Generally the attackers dropped torpedoes which followed a depth of approximately 65ft. With practice, the pilots improved, but they could not achieve the 33ft requirement. Almost despairing, they studied the situation, and eventually devised an innovative solution: the use of torpedoes with added wooden fins to provide additional stability and buoyancy. Scores for kills in maneuvers rose dramatically to 70 percent, and higher on stationary vessels.

For identification purposes, the Japanese had broken Pearl Harbor into district areas: A (between Ford Island and the Navy Yard); B (the northwest area of Ford Island); C (East Loch); D (Middle Loch); and E (West Loch). District A was subdivided into five areas: the docks northwest of the Navy Yard; the mooring pillars; the Navy Yard repair dock; the docks; and the remaining area.

As of December 3, the Japanese knew Oklahoma, Nevada, Enterprise, two heavy cruisers, and 12 destroyers had left Pearl Harbor, and five battleships, three heavy cruisers, three light cruisers, 12 destroyers, and a